Army struggles to ease strain on troops

[unhappycamper]

Army struggles to ease strain on troops
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, November 7, 2009

HEIDELBERG, Germany — Hiring more mental health counselors, asking soldiers to keep tabs on each other’s mental health and working to remove the stigma of getting psychological help are all well and good.

But the single most important thing the Army could do to relieve stress on Army troops and reduce the number of suicides, the Army’s top enlisted leader said Friday, is to give troops a chance to just slow down.

Increasing "dwell time" — the amount of time soldiers have at home between combat deployments — would prevent some problems, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth Preston said.

"A dwell time increase — it allows a unit to slow down, get back to normality" he said. "It affects not only the soldier and family and stability," he said, it would also slow down the current, rushed tempo of deployment, coming home, going to a new post, becoming part of a new unit and deploying again.

"It’s not one particular thing" that is stressing the force and driving up suicides, he said. "It’s the military operational pace and tempo."

Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65921

[sarge43]

1. Straight from the N. S. Sherlock Academy of the Painfully Obivious n/t